Arachnaphobia

It started out like a normal Monday morning. Brian had left for work and Charlotte, Jensen, and I were right in the middle of our sponge bath routine. I usually give Charlotte the first sponge bath on the pack 'n' play's changing table while Jensen hangs out on a blanket on the floor beside us and waits his turn. So Charlotte was finished with her bath and I decided to put her down on the blanket beside Jensen and go get some fresh water for Jensen's sponge bath. Here's the setup (the pink blanket is where the babies where hanging out at this particular point in the story).

As I walked back through the doorway with Jensen's sponge bath water, something caught my eye right at the edge of where the carpet meets the slate. I could see that it was a spider--it wasn't huge, but it definitely was not tiny. And it was two or three feet from where Charlotte and Jensen were playing on their blanket. I know some people are all, "You shouldn't kill spiders, they eat bugs" and all that, but let's be honest: I am not going to take the time to try to catch a spider and put it outside. And I could really do without the spider being mere feet away from my babies.

So I grabbed the nearest weapon, which happened to be Brian's shoe. And I very carefully (so it would not run away in the direction of Charlotte and Jensen) lowered the shoe over the spider. And squished it. And at that instant, about a hundred teeny, tiny spider babies swarmed out from under the shoe. I'm not kidding, it was like something from one of those really bad movies about urban legends. It looked a little something like this:

No, this is not the actual spider (and babies) from my house. This spider is bigger, but there were definitely that many babies. I googled "spider babies" to find this picture. Do yourself a favor and do not google "spider babies."

I freaked out and grabbed the nearest thing I could think of that would kill all the spiders, which was a bottle of bathroom cleaner, and just started spraying. As soon as I got a good coating of the cleaner over the entire area, I grabbed Charlotte and Jensen and stuck them in their swings so they'd be off the floor. (I know that you're probably reading this and thinking, "Seriously? What is wrong with her? Why didn't she pick up her babies the second she saw the spider?" And you're right, I should have. But I really just thought I could grab a shoe, kill the spider, and be back to baths in no time. But lesson definitely learned.)

Once Charlotte and Jensen were off the floor, I went back to taking care of the spider-baby situation. I think I killed the mom spider with the shoe, and the bathroom cleaner seemed to have done the trick and there were just a few stragglers left (sorry if you love spiders; this is probably making you very sad). I got some paper towels and was almost finished cleaning up the mess when I decided I had better take a picture...so here you go, a few dead spider babies that were hiding under the edge of the carpet:

Each tiny black speck is a spider baby, and there is a cluster of them under the carpet.

So. I am still seriously, seriously grossed out. As in, I still get goosebumps when I think about it, and all day long I have felt like there are spider babies on me. Every time Charlotte or Jensen fusses, I do an examination to make sure they are not fussing because they are being bitten by a spider baby. I really don't even know what happened? How do spiders have babies? Was the mom spider sitting on a sac of babies or something and it burst when I squished it? I know I could google to find out, but I really, really, really don't want to. I've already seen enough spider babies to last a lifetime.